ceos for cities activity deck

Who made this?This activity deck was created for the CEOs for Cities 2013 Fall National Meeting Art of the Collaborative City by Big Car Collective, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit arts organization. Big Cars work is about encouraging creativity, social interaction, and boosting the quality of life for all. Cards not otherwise credited were created by Jim Walker with creative direction and design by Andy Fry. Learn more at www.bigcar.org.

Please post documentation of your activities on Twitter to @CEOsForCities and @BigCar with the hashtag #PlayDeck.

E xq u i s i t E C o r p s E For three or more players.

Each player receives a sheet of paper and folds it into sections equal in number to those playing, and usually with the lines horizontal to the proposed picture. The sheets are smoothed out and each player draws whatever will be the top section, allowing lines to cross the crease slightly. The sheet is then refolded, hiding the drawing, except for the lines that crossed the crease. The next player begins the second part of the drawing at these lines, creates new ones over the second set of creases, folds the paper again and hands it to the next player. This process continues until the last section is completed and the collaborative drawing is revealed.

1924 from Surrealist games

q u E s t i o n a n d a n sW E r For two or more players

A question is written down, the paper folded to conceal it from the next player, who writes an answer on the same paper. The paper is unfolded to reveal the result. Remarkable facts emerge.


C E rta i n p o s s i b i l i t i E s r E l at i n g to t h E i r r at i o n a l E m b E l l i s h m E n t o f a C i t y For any number of players. The players ask whether they would conserve, displace, modify, transform, or suppress certain aspects of a city.


Whats surrealism? Surrealism was born in 1924 with the release of French writer Andre Bretons first Surrealist manifesto. In it, he wrote: I believe in the future resolution of two states, dream and reality, into a kind of absolute reality a surreality. The organized Surrealist movement brought together artists and poets who embraced play, chance, collaboration, surprise, and unexpected juxtapositions in their work. While surrealism is best known for its visual artists like Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, the poet Breton led the movement until his death in 1966.

Whats something you like about me?

Whats the story of something you are wearing?

What bird would you be?

What would you invent?

Where do you like to sit?

Whats an experience in a city that surprised you?

What should every neighborhood have?

How would your city change with more people but fewer drivers?

What would happen if you didnt own a car?

Whats a success youve enjoyed thanks to collaboration?

Whats your favorite public place?

f l y p i E C E Fly.

Yoko Ono | Fluxus event score, 1963

Wa l k i n g E v E n t On a busy city avenue, draw a circle about 10 feet in diameter with chalk on the sidewalk. Walk around the circle as long as possible without stopping.

Milan Knizak | Fluxus event score, 1965

s t r E E t p i E C E Make something in the street and give it away.

Alison Knowles | Fluxus event score, 1962

s h a d oW p i E C E Make Shadows still or moving of your body or something on the road, wall, floor or anything else. Catch the shadows by some means.

Mieko Shiomi | Fluxus event score, 1963

lo o k Look at an object in as many different ways as possible.

Ben Vautier | Fluxus event score, 1964

d i r E Ct i o n Arrange to observe a sign indicating direction of travel. Travel in the indicated direction. Travel in another direction.

George Brecht | Fluxus event score, 1961

f o r E s t E v E n t n u m b E r 6 Walk out of your house. Walk to the forest. Walk into the forest.

f o r E s t E v E n t n u m b E r 7 When you walk into a forest, dont forget to knock.

Bengt Af Klintberg | Fluxus event scores, 1966

Walk all day long aimlessly through the city. The best is alone.

Milan Knizak | Fluxus event score, 1966

# 1 85 Wind materials you find around objects you find on a walk. Leave them along your path.

Bob Lens | Fluxus event score, date unknown

Whats fluxus?Fluxus began as a very loose allegiance of artists (or anti-artists) who came to prominence in the 1960s in New York City and in Europe. Yoko Ono is the most famous of the bunch. George Maciunas was the father of Fluxus. Influenced by people like musician and theorist John Cage, Fluxus artists created unconventional performance scores that often involved audience participation. Today, Big Car Collective encourages artists and non-artists alike to perform Fluxus mini-events as a way to connect with the past, better know themselves, and celebrate creativity.

What wouldnt you do?

1974 from Oblique Strategies by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt

Gardening, not architecture.


Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list.


What are oblique strategies? Experimental musician and producer Brian Eno and painter Peter Schmidt, both British, collaborated in 1974 on a deck of instruction cards to help them with their creative processes. Later, Eno printed the deck to give away as a gift, and then responding to popular demand to sell to the general public.

m a k E a p o s t E r o f s h a d oWs You may take pictures of the shadows or simply trace them. These solid shapes should then be drawn on paper and colored in with a single color. You are not interested in anything but the shadow itself, and you are most interested in shadows that dont look anything like the objects that created them; abstract shapes.

2007, Learning to Love You More by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July

m a k E a f l i E r o f yo u r day Write a paragraph describing a typical day in your life. Make one hundred photocopied fliers of the description (you dont have to include your name) and post them all over your neighborhood.


ta k E a fa m i l y p o rt r a i t o f t Wo fa m i l i E s Go to a park, beach or other public place and locate two separate families who are having a picnic or barbeque. Ask the two families to join together so that you can take a group picture of them. Try to find two families who dont know each other and who look different from each other.


g roW a ga r d E n i n an u n Ex p ECt E d s pot Find an unexpected public place where you can plant seeds and water over a period of time. Possible locations could be a vacant lot, a median strip, a public park, etc.


m a k E a n E n C o u r ag i n g b a n n E r Think of something encouraging you often tell yourself. For example: Everything will be ok. Or: Dont listen to them. Or: Itll blow over. Now make a banner, making sure to follow these instructions:1. Draw each letter of the sentence on a large piece of colored construction paper or big squares of fabric. One letter per piece. Draw them blocky so you can cut them out.

2. Cut them out.

3. Glue each one onto a piece of construction paper or fabric that is a contrasting color.

4. Then glue the edges of all the pieces of paper or fabric together to make a banner.

5. Hang the banner in a place where you or someone else might need some encouragement, for example, across your bathroom. Or between two trees so that you and your neighbors can receive encouragement from it. Or in a gas station.


g i v E a dv i C E to yo u r s E l f i n t h E pa s t Choose a particular age you have been, perhaps a time when you were particularly lost. Write out a list of practical advice to yourself at that age. Sure everything turned out OK, but maybe you should have quit that job five years earlier, maybe you should have had children when you were 27, maybe you should have flossed, maybe you should have gone to the alternative high school, or not said that thing to your best friend. Tell yourself what to do in clear, specific language. Do not write an essay, make it in list form.


Whats learning to love you more?Learning to Love You More was a crowd-sourced art project by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July that offered assignments for the general public. Between 2002 and 2009, more than 8,000 people followed assignments and posted documentation of their responses at www.learningtoloveyoumore.com. A book of this documentation by Fletcher, now a Portland, Oregon-based social practice artist and professor, and July, a New York-based performance artist and filmmaker, is available from Prestel.

Look for living creatures in the city birds, bugs, etc. Write a brief description of what you see. Try to find a creature youve never noticed before.

Ask someone you dont know for advice.

Walk toward the water.

After John Cage

Sit somewhere in the city for 4 minutes and 33 seconds and do nothing but listen.

Find discarded photocopies at a copier in your office, school or neighborhood copy center. Using tape, hang a small exhibit of your favorite discoveries on a nearby wall.

Choose cards from this deck and leave them for others without explanation.

Write your own brief instruction on a blank card included in this deck and give it to a person.

On a walk, find seven yellow places. Take pictures of each. Then buy or find a yellow gift and give it to someone. Next time, do this with a different color.

THI N

K

The global urban population is growing by 65 million annually, equivalent to adding seven Chicagos a year.

McKinsey Global Institute Report, Urban World: Mapping the Economic Power of Cities

The greatest asset that a city or a city neighborhood can have is something thats different from every other place

Jane Jacobs (2006)

Chase the vision, not the money. The money will end up following you.

Tony Hsieh | CEO, Zappos

243 million Americans live in the 3% of our nation that is urban.

Ed Glaeser, Harvard Professor, Triumph of the City

Collaborative communitiestranscend the boundaries of time and spacethe new age of networked intelligence renders conventional approaches to value creation insufficient...organizations that make their boundaries porous to external ideas and human capital outperform those that rely solely on internal resources and capabilities.

Don Tapscott and Anthony Brown, Macrowikinomics

Tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires.

Steve Jobs

Reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per person by one mile per day in each of the 51 largest metro areas would produce an aggregate annual household savings of $31 billion.

CEOs for Cities, The Green Dividend Report

I didnt run for mayor to be the caretaker of the status quo.

The Honorable Michael Nutter | Mayor, City of Philadelphia

58% of a citys success is related to college attainment.

CEOs for Cities Research

When I arrived, I felt we were trying to fit family programs into our theaters whenever there was time.

My feeling was that we shouldnt have to fit them into other theaters. They should have a theater of their own.

Michael Kaiser | President, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Placemaking requires a marathon mindset.

Jessica Goldman Srebnick | CEO, Goldman Properties

If everyone lived as dense as they do in Manhattan, the human race could fit in New Zealand.

waitbutwhy.com

In the United States, metropolitan areas contain 84 percent of the population and generate 91 percent of GDP.

Bruce Katz | Vice President, Brookings Institution

Whatever youre thinking,think bigger.

Tony Hsieh | CEO, Zappos

ceos for cities activity deck

Documents

i t i e s r e

s t r e e t p i e c

i n g e v e n t

e xq u i s i t e c o

t h e i r r

y p i e c e fly

e n t o f

n sw e r